The Alchemist's Pursuit Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Acknowledgements

  GLOSSARY

  PRAISE FOR The Alchemist’s CODE

  “The even more intriguing sequel to The Alchemist’s Apprentice (2007) is a mystery solved by the clairvoyant and sage Nostradamus and his apprentice, Alfeo Zeno . . . Duncan’s alternate late-Renaissance Venice is wonderfully drawn and quite believable.”—Booklist

  PRAISE FOR

  The Alchemist’s APPRENTICE

  “Brimming with wit and low-key charms; neither aficionados nor newcomers will be disappointed.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “The occult is a grace note in this cynical whodunit, juicy with period detail.”—Entertainment Weekly

  “This book is fun . . . There’s humor and adventure, mystery and magic, all rolled up in one package . . . The Alchemist’s Apprentice can be enjoyed by both mystery lovers and fantasy fans.”—SFRevu

  “Duncan mingles arch fantasy and a whodunit plot in this alternate version of old Venice . . . Nostradamus and Alfeo’s adventures provide more amusement than chills in this charming farce, which comments lightly on class prejudice, political chicanery, and occult tomfoolery.”—Publishers Weekly

  “Dave Duncan’s wit shows a distinctive intelligence, a clear-eyed vision that’s both irreverent and astute.”—Locus

  “Duncan’s latest novel launches a new series set in an alternate Venice and filled with the author’s customary touches of humor, light satire, and fast-paced action. [Duncan] shows his mastery of both storytelling and character building.”

  —Library Journal

  Acclaim FOR DAVE Duncan

  AND his PREVIOUS WORK

  “Dave Duncan knows how to spin a ripping good yarn.”

  —SF Reviews.net

  “Duncan is an exceedingly finished stylist and a master of world building and characterizations.”—Booklist

  “Dave Duncan is one of the best writers in the fantasy world today. His writing is clear, vibrant, and full of energy. His action scenes are breathtaking, and his skill at characterization is excellent.”—Writers Write

  “Duncan excels at old-fashioned swashbuckling fantasy, maintaining a delicate balance between breathtaking excitement, romance, and high camp in a genre that is easy to overdo.”—Romantic Times

  “Duncan can swashbuckle with the best, but his characters feel more deeply and think more clearly than most, making his novels . . . suitable for a particularly wide readership.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “An enormously clever and impressive reshuffle, whether you regard the final twist as a brilliantly contrived sleight or an outrageous swindle: for panache, style, and sheer storytelling audacity, Duncan has few peers.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  Also by Dave Duncan

  The Alchemist

  THE ALCHEMIST’S APPRENTICE

  THE ALCHEMIST’S CODE

  THE ALCHEMIST’S pursuit

  The Dodec Books

  CHILDREN OF CHAOS

  MOTHER OF LIES

  Chronicles of the King’s Blades

  PARAGON LOST

  IMPOSSIBLE Odds

  THE Jaguar knights

  Tales of the King’s Blades

  THE GILDED chain

  LORD OF THE FIRE lands

  SKY OF SWORDS

  A Man of His Word

  magic CASEMENT

  FAERY lands FORLORN

  PERILOUS SEAS

  EMPEROR and CLOWN

  A Handful of Men

  THE cutting EDGE

  upland Outlaws

  THE STRICKEN FIELD

  THE LIVING GOD

  ill MET in THE ARENA

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2009 by Dave Duncan.

  All rights reserved.

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  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace trade paperback edition / March 2009

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  eISBN : 978-1-101-01974-0

  1. Nostradamus, 1503-1566—Fiction. 2. Alchemists—Fiction. 3. Astrologers—Fiction.

  4. Courtesans—Crimes against—Fiction. 5. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 6. Venice

  (Italy)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9199.3.D847A8 2009

  813’.54—dc22 2008049489

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  1

  This doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “What use is it?” I saw at once that I had asked a bad question. My master was glaring at me.

  He had spent all morning instructing me in numerology—gematria, isopsephy, and similar thrilling pastimes. He had quoted from the Kabbalah, Pythagoras, Johannes Trithemius of Sponheim, Hermes Trismegistus, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Saint John the Divine, and his own celebrated uncle, the late Michel de Nostredame, marking critical passages that I was now required to memorize. He
had set me a dozen problems to work out in my free time, if I ever got any.

  And I had just implied that he had been wasting his time and mine.

  I never know from one hour to the next what he will tell me to do: cast horoscopes, run errands, blend potions, help him with patients, rescue damsels, memorize pages of ancient mumbo jumbo, cast spells, decrypt letters, massage the doge’s lumbosacral musculature, or fight for my life—all in the day’s work. Apprentices do as they are told; they never ask why.

  Yesterday it had been sortilege. Today it was numerology. The real problem was the excess of rheum in his hips, which the current February weather had aggravated until now he was barely able to walk. He had needed help from Bruno, our porter, just to make it out of bed and across the salone to his favorite chair in the atelier. There he had refused any breakfast and set out to stuff me with fifteen hundred years of numerology before noon as a way of taking his mind off hurting and growing old. I had run back and forth at his bidding, doing calculations at the desk, fetching musty tomes from the great wall of books, squatting alongside his chair while we went over the texts, word by incomprehensible word. I admit that he never complains of his infirmities, but when they trouble him he complains massively about everything else. I had never known him crabbier than that morning. It was past noon, dinnertime.

  “Sense?” he snarled. “Sense? You mean it does not appear to make sense to you! Do you claim more intelligence than San Zorzi or Pythagoras? Can you concede that smarter or better informed persons might make sense of it?”

  “Of course, master.”

  “For instance, suppose you explain to me how the doge is elected?”

  Doge? So far as I knew, our prince was still in reasonable health for his age. I had updated his horoscope just a month ago, and it had shown no need to elect Pietro Moro’s successor for several years yet. The way Venice chooses its head of state is certainly madder than any numerology, but I felt the Maestro was playing unfairly by throwing it in my face.

  “The patricians of the Great Council, but only those over thirty years of—”

  Thunk . . . thunk . . .

  Saved! Seldom have I been happier to hear our front door knocker. I rose, relieved to straighten my knees. The Maestro scowled, but greeting visitors is another of my jobs. I went out into the salone and opened the big door.

  The visitor was unfamiliar, wearing a gondolier’s jerkin and baggy trousers in house colors I did not recognize, but his sullen, resentful expression was all too typical of his trade. He was taller, wider, and older than I.

  “For Doctor Nostradamus,” he said, thrusting a letter at me. That was the name written on the paper, but he wouldn’t know it unless he had been told.

  “I’ll give it to him directly. Wait for the reply.” I shut the door on him and went back into the atelier.

  “Read it,” the Maestro growled impatiently. He is old and shrunken, but that day he seemed more wizened than ever, huddled in his black physician’s robe, clutching a cane in one hand, with another lying nearby, balanced on a column of books. Normally he walks with the aid of a long and elaborately decorated staff, but lately he had been forced into using two canes. He dyes his goatee brown and days of neglect had turned the roots to the same bright silver as the wisps of hair dangling from under his bonnet.

  I broke the wax and unfolded the parchment. “It’s from the manservant of sier Giovanni Gradenigo, written in an appalling scrawl and signed ‘Battista’ in the same hand. He begs you to attend his master in haste because other doctors have given up hope of his recovery.”

  The Maestro winced at the thought of going anywhere. “He’s no patient of mine.”

  “No, master. Sier Lorenzo Gradenigo commissioned a horoscope from you four years ago, but he belongs to another branch of—”

  “I know that! Tell him to call Modestus.”

  “The letter is from the Palazzo Gradenigo. Those Gradenigos are richer than the Pharaohs ever were.”

  The Maestro winced again, this time at the thought of the fee he was losing. Where money is concerned, if he can’t take it with him he’s not going. His medical practice has dwindled to a few very wealthy or important persons and he rarely gets called out any more, but this attack had him so crippled that he would be unable even to stand at a patient’s bedside. “Do as I say!”

  “Yes, master.”

  I went over to the desk and penned a quick note, recommending Isaia Modestus of the Ghetto Nuovo as the second-best doctor in Venice. I signed the Maestro’s name to it, sealed it with his signet, and took it out to Surly, who scowled at the soldo I offered him.

  “It’s as much as I ever get,” I told him cheerfully.

  “I can see why.” With that parting sneer, he took the coin and slouched off down the marble staircase. He ought to know by now that the grander a palace is, the worse the chance of a decent tip.

  I locked the door behind him, but I paused outside the atelier because I saw Mama Angeli rolling along the salone toward me without a glance at all the magnificent Titian and Tintoretto paintings, the giant statues, and the shining Murano mirrors she was passing. She carried a burping baby on her shoulder, while a squalling toddler staggered in her wake. She has lots more that came from where those came from—and a flourishing herd of grandchildren besides—but she is the finest cook in Venice, and when I say “rolling” I am not exaggerating much.

  She glowered at me, chins raised in anger. “My Filetti di San Pietro in Salsa d’Arencia will be ruined.”

  I groaned and rumbled simultaneously. “The Ten could use you. None of their torturers can touch you for pure sadism. I’ll see what I can do.”

  That wasn’t much. I got no further than the first syllable of Mama’s name.

  “Sit!” The Maestro jabbed a gnarled finger at the floor by his chair.

  “Yes, master.” Instead of sitting on the floor as suggested, I planted myself on one of the piles of books that stood around his chair. I wasn’t seriously worried that otherwise he might order me to roll over so he could scratch my tummy, but the thought did occur to me. I would probably have to re-shelve every one of the books before I got any dinner, if I ever did get any dinner. Nostradamus forgets all about food at times. He could outfast a camel.

  “Now,” he said, screwing up his face in a truly hideous grimace, “explain to an ignorant foreign-born how the Venetians elect their doges.”

  “The Great Council starts by drawing lots,” I said. “That’s called sortilege.” Probably almost all the twelve hundred or so eligible patricians will attend for a ducal election, because they happen rarely. “Each one draws a ball out of the pot and thirty of those bear a secret mark.” The Maestro must have been told all this sometime and he never forgets anything. I couldn’t see what it had to do with numerology. Or my dinner.

  “Then they draw lots to reduce the thirty to nine.” I had been hoping to eat quickly and pay a brief but possibly rewarding visit to my adored Violetta, who lives in the house next door, Number 96. She works nights and I work days, so the noon break is our best chance to be together. I had not seen her for three days and was missing her sorely. “Then the nine elect forty. The forty are reduced by lot to—”

  Thunk . . . Thunk . . . Thunk . . .

  I smiled woodenly and went out to see.

  And gape. Poised like an alighting angel on the landing outside was the most breathtakingly gorgeous exciting ravishing woman in the entire world. The perfection of her face, the lightning speed of her wit, and the enslaving madness provoked by her peerless body inspire men to pay hundreds of ducats for a night with her. Sometimes more than that. She was, of course, Violetta herself, my beloved, the finest courtesan in Venice.

  Violetta will sometimes provide the Maestro with strategic advice on the wealthy, for it is among them that she spends her evenings and finds her patrons. I visit her whenever I can; she never comes calling on me.

  “I’m busy,” I whispered. Whatever his other frailties, the Maestro ha
s ears like a bat. I rolled my eyes in the direction of the atelier.

  “It is wonderful to see you again, Alfeo.” Violetta sighed a low-pitched, heart-stopping sigh. She had automatically slid into her Helen-of-Troy persona, which meant that she wanted something; no man can resist Helen. Her voice thrilled like a low note on a cello, and eyelashes fluttered over deep-set eyes promising all the joys of the Prophet’s paradise. “But you mustn’t try to distract me, you lovely man. Later I’ll have lots of time for whatever it is you want. I came to consult Maestro Nostradamus.”

  “Consult? If you need your horoscope cast, I’ll be more than—”

  “No. I want him to find somebody for me.” She extended a hand, and I perforce offered my arm, for she was wearing her platform soles, which make her considerably taller then I am. In February her hair lacked the glorious auburn glow that it gains from summer sunshine, but it was coifed, scented, and bejeweled as if for a state banquet. A pearl necklace and low-cut scarlet gown shone through the open front of a floor-length miniver robe. Altogether, dressing her would have cost a duke’s ransom and taken at least a couple of hours; she rarely opens her eyes before noon.

  I locked the door behind her and escorted her into the atelier. The Maestro was scowling again. There are few people whose company he enjoys at all and he hates to be interrupted, so he ranks unexpected visitors with lice and vipers, even if they bring money with them. Violetta can be an exception because in her Minerva mode she is at least as brilliant as he is, and the idea of an educated woman fascinates him. I hoped she would be a welcome distraction for him in his present mood; his expression suggested that he thought I had sent for her.